1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to apparatus for coiling and cooling wire rod or rolled wire, comprising a rotating turn-laying head and a coil receiver for collecting the wire turns which is located below the laying head in a cooling tank.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In modern wire rod mills, steel wire rod of middle to high carbon content is patented by controlled cooling from the rolling temperature, in order to improve the drawing properties. In this respect, it is known either to cool the wire turns formed by the laying head in a fanned-out arrangement on a conveyor belt using air, or to allow them to fall directly into a water bath and to collect them into coils.
German Patent Specification No. OS 2602696 discloses apparatus for coiling and cooling wire rod in which, in order to satisfy high discharge speeds in a wire rod mill, guides are disposed in a cooling liquid tank rotatable about a vertical axis, for receiving three wire coils which can be brought sequentially under a rotating turn-laying head. By rotating the cooling liquid tank, the wound wire coils arrive under an overhead travelling crane which lifts them out of the tank and conveys them away.
This device is costly. The step-wise rotation of the tank filled with cooling medium and two coils requires a large drive power.
A further drawback of this device is that the distance of the laying head from the coil surface cannot be kept constant, as is necessary for uniform winding, but instead it becomes smaller as the coil becomes larger. A further drawback is that a special overhead travelling crane with a costly manually inserted gripping device must be available for lifting the coils and conveying them away.
The object of the invention is to provide a simple and operationally reliable device for coiling and cooling wire rod, in which the distance from the laying head to the coil surface can be held at a constant small value, and the extraction of the coil can be carried out rapidly, automatically and in an operationally reliable manner.